Baking in a Cloche

There are many ways to get a crusty loaf of bread, but one of our favorites is to use the tried and true method of baking in a clay cloche, here, the Emile Henry brand cloche. It is very similar to using a Dutch Oven, but the cloche was designed to bake bread, so it is an even more intuitive method. In other words, you aren’t lowering the bread into the piping hot vessel, you just lift the lid and slide the loaf onto what is essentially a baking stone. The cloche traps the steam from the dough to create a perfectly crisp and beautifully shiny crust, without having to add steam to the oven.

I have a new gas range, of course it won’t hold the steam, so I broke down and bought a new enameled Dutch Oven from Costco, Kirkland brand made in France. It’s beautiful and only $79. I baked in it for the first time last night, the crust was beautiful all over. I had a hard time on the preheated stone getting the bottom nice and brown (???). The Kirkland dutch oven has a knob that can heat up to 500 degrees. I baked at 500 covered for 15 minutes then took the lid off and finished for 20 minutes at 450.

Just got my The New Artisan Bread yesterday and I can’t stop reading it! Thank you for devoting time to publish this wonderful book.
The largest container I usually mix dough in has a 9-cup capacity. I made a master dough in half the recipe last night and after the initial 2-hr rise, it almost outgrew my container, but I have to leave the lid cracked open so didn’t bother me. The question I have here is that is it okay if my dough STICKS TO THE LID even when it went back down a little in the fridge? Will I do any harm to the gluten when pulling the lid open?
Or should I adjust the recipe to fit my container, (say, less than 40% of the original master dough?)

I just discovered Bread in 5 a couple months ago when I found the recipe on the Gold Medal Unbleached Flour bag I had just purchased. What a great recipe, almost too easy to have such a yummy loaf of fresh bread! I’m looking forward to more when I have the full book collection. Thank you!

A very good friend of mine showed me how easy it was to bake bread using your method and also how good it tasted! I am going to try it myself this week. I feel confident that I will be successful, thanks to not only your book, but also your website and videos. I can’t wait to bake my first loaf of bread! Thank you!!